Guidance

PSC requirements for companies and limited liability partnerships

Guidance for companies, limited liability partnerships (LLPs) and eligible Scottish partnerships on the register of people with significant control (PSC) requirements.

Documents

Details

These requirements introduce new legal duties and those failing to comply could be committing a criminal offence and could be fined and/or imprisoned.

These guides have been prepared by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy with the help of business, civil society and legal experts.

 How to send us your PSC information

Send us PSC information for:

Guidance to the PSC requirements

General guidance explaining what you must do to comply with the PSC requirements.

Summary guidance

This guidance provides a broad overview on the PSC requirements for companies. If you have a simple company ownership and control structure, you may not need to read additional guidance.

Guidance for companies

This guidance provides a detailed explanation of the PSC requirements for companies. This should provide all the information that most companies need to complete their PSC registers. Very complicated or large ownership or control structures may need to seek independent advice.

Guidance for PSCs

This guidance provides a detailed explanation of the PSC requirements for individuals who may be PSCs. This provides all the information that PSCs need to know in order to comply with the new requirements.

The Department welcomes comments on how these guides might be improved, please see the contact page in each of the documents.

Statutory guidance on the meaning of significant influence or control

This is a specific guide to the meaning of one term in the PSC legislation - ‘significant influence or control’ is included in the fourth and fifth specified conditions for being a person with significant control. The statutory guidance is required to explain how that term should be interpreted.

There is separate statutory guidance for companies (including SEs) and LLPs.

The companies’ statutory guidance has been laid in draft before Parliament and is awaiting approval. If approved, it will have a statutory footing.

The LLP statutory guidance cannot be laid in Parliament until the LLP regulations have come into force. This means they will be laid in parliament on the 6 April 2016, and will come into force after sitting in Parliament for 40 days. They are provided here in draft.

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Published 27 January 2016
Last updated 15 February 2018 + show all updates
  1. Links to PSC forms added.

  2. Guidance updated to reflect changes to the PSC regime in June 2017.

  3. Reference to BIS changed to BEIS due to department name change.

  4. New version of 'company statutory guidance for the PSC register' added, which is no longer in draft. New version of 'draft LLP statutory guidance for the PSC register' added.

  5. Guidance for people with significant control updated to version 2 and PSC guidance for companies, LLPs and SEs updated to version 4.

  6. Guidance for PSCs added to the page.

  7. Correction in Chapter 7 to the section on ‘Rights exercisable only in certain circumstances’.

  8. New version of PSC guidance for companies, LLPs and SEs: updated wording in Annex 4: Guidance for Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs).

  9. Welsh landing page translation added.

  10. Clarification to 12 February update: No additional text added. Correction made to section 7.1 of Chapter 7 in PSC guidance for companies, LLPs and SEs. 15 February: New version of PSC guidance for companies, LLPs and SEs attached, with extra wording for the register added to Annex 4: Guidance for Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs).

  11. Additional text to Chapter 7 regarding treasury shares

  12. First published.